mining towns

Mount Shamrock Township, 1908. Collection of Geraldine Mate.

The small cemetery at Kingsborough. Only a few graves are marked, and most of those are children. Photograph by Jan Wegner

Three white-flowering frangipani trees and a few scraps of ceramic are all that’s left of these house sites in the tin and wolfram mining town of Koorboora. Photograph by Jan Wegner

Steps to the hotel, Queen of the North township, Palmer. Photograph by Jan Wegner

The corrugated iron tank on the right of this timber-framed humpy has been adapted to a room, with doors and windows cut out.

Stumps and corrugated iron tanks are common remains. These are surrounded by custard apple trees, remnants of the garden, and two noxious weeds which plague abandoned mining towns: Chinee Apple (Zizyphus mauritiana) and Rubber Vine (Cryptostegia grandiflora). Photograph by Jan Wegner

Eclipse Tower, one of the spectacular limestone bluffs in the Mungana town area. There is a lime quarry below the Queensland bottle tree on the bluff. Photograph by Jan Wegner

Garden bed or path edging, Woolgar. Collection of Vic Taylor

Out where the dead towns lie

Scattered across the tropical north of Queensland are hundreds of dead towns. Called into being by mining, they were abandoned when the minerals ran out or proved to be unprofitable.